Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

In four decades, he has gone
from journalistically exposing widespread White House criminality that forced a
presidential resignation to elder-statesman pique that places himself at the
center of a false balance between Barack Obama and the GOP pygmies threatening
the economy.

Summoning up the days of Deep
Throat, Bob Woodward complains publicly about being pressured by “a very senior
person” at the White House over blaming the President for the sequester:

'Look, we don't go around
trying to say to reporters, if you, in an honest way, present something we
don't like, that, you know, you're going to regret this.'”

Never mind that the negative “threat”
was embedded in a long e-mail preceded by an apology: “I apologize for raising
my voice in our conversation today. You’re focusing on a few specific trees
that give a very wrong impression of the forest. But perhaps we will just not
see eye to eye here.”

Holy Haldeman, Erlichman,
Mitchell and Colson! These Obama people must be getting ready to bring down the
FBI and CIA on the intrepid reporter who dares to oppose them.

Woodward’s effort to put
himself up front in the sequester story will no doubt be dramatized in a future
episode of HBO’s “Newsroom,” but it’s disheartening to see him elbowing his way
into a distraction as the drama unfolds.

Any young beat reporter would
remind him that there is no equivalence between a gang of muggers and what the
victim does or fails to do in trying to ward them off.

Update: A White House statement
insists that "of course no threat was intended. As Mr. Woodward noted, the
e-mail from the aide was sent to apologize for voices being raised in their
previous conversation. The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the
observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was
inaccurate, nothing more. And Mr. Woodward responded to this aide's e-mail in a
friendly manner."

Not exactly a Dick
Cheney-Scooter Libby reprise, but it will keep Woodward in the cable news
spotlight for a few days.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

On
the eve of sequester, both sides are outdoing themselves in terrifying
Americans about catastrophic cuts, but the name in the award envelope is a
golden oldie with a double feature of horrors.

Sarah Palin returns to warn that government will not only break down but is hoarding
bullets to deal with the enraged taxpayers.

“If
we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when
we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits,” she confides to Facebook, “then
we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually
and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.”

She
noses out John Boehner whose latest horror scene is over an "outrageous"
move by federal immigration officials to release hundreds of illegal immigrants
as a way to save money ahead of Friday's deadline.

The
competition has been bipartisan as Washington
Post columnist David Ignatius suggests the White House has been joining them
in weeks of “blame-game politics. Doesn’t the president see that the GOP is
addicted to this showdown at Thunder Road? This is all the power the GOP has
these days, really--the ability to scare the heck out of everybody and run the
car into the ditch.”

In
all this sturm und drang, it is the
nation’s union leaders, Obama’s strongest backers, who are calling for sanity
by repealing the law that set up sequestration.

“We
urge,” says the AFL-CIO executive council, “President Obama and members of
Congress of both parties to reject the Republican ransom demands and disarm the
hostage takers instead. Only then can we focus on the urgent challenge of
fixing the economy, raising wages, investing in our people and putting America
back to work.”

Not
as sexy as Palin’s call to “stop the hysterics,” but any sign of agreement is
heartening.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Speaker shoots himself in the foot urging that “the
Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something” about sequester cuts. The
Upper House fails to agree, leaving John Boehner and his Tea Party captors
stuck in the slow-motion anarchy they have unleashed.

GOP politicians these days are racing through thick mud
of their own making, gasping for TV air, feet churning, going nowhere—-to
create the sight of a government stumbling toward anarchy on the sequester, gun
control, immigration and any other serious issue that might come up.

Boehner’s self-inflicted wounds have led the President
to his only viable option, two more years of stumping against Republican
madness in the hope of wresting control of the House from them in 2014.
Meanwhile, he is setting them up for their own voters’ realization that tax
money pays for actual services.

That’s a hard and messy lesson for the best-educated
electorate in history to be learning at this late date but, even as GOP
diehards give up their loony opposition to Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry is making the point for German students about our differences with their
country in the last century.

“As a society,” he tells them, “we live and breathe
the idea of religious freedom and...political tolerance, whatever the point of
view.

"People have sometimes wondered about why our
Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade even though it's
the most provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult
to one group or another.”

That, says Kerry, is “freedom of speech. In America
you have a right to be stupid--if you want to be."

As Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their cohorts keep
abusing that privilege, isn’t it time for more Americans to be speaking truth
to stupid?

Almost
100 leaders of the nation’s largest and most influential Christian
congregations, calling themselves the “Circle of Protection,” urge Congress and
the President to resist “budget cuts that undermine the lives, dignity and
rights of poor and vulnerable people.”

Their
concern reflects a Norman Rockwell America that still exists somewhere under
today’s layers of sound-bite meanness and cynicism, when “love thy neighbor as
thyself” could be heard from pulpits.

As
the White House warns of how the sequester would cut airport security, teaching
jobs and vaccines for children, Republicans keep digging in to avoid taxes on corporations
and the richest Americans.

In a
reversal of traditional clichés, more realism can be heard inside church walls
than in the halls of Congress as Protestant leaders proclaim:

“Important
choices must be made: we must weigh the benefits of tax credits for low-income
people and tax breaks for high-income people; of nutrition assistance to
low-income families and subsidies to agricultural businesses...

“Congress
can and must develop a balanced and thoughtful path forward that protects the
most vulnerable and preserves economic opportunity.”

For
those who respect the faith of religious Americans even though they do not
share it, this effort to unsequester their traditional moral beliefs is a
heartening sign of sanity.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Season
3 is gone and so are two of the most appealing characters, reflecting not the choice
of series creators but career moves by young actors, latest in a long list of
modestly talented young people who keep overestimating their contributions to a
TV triumph.

Julian
Fellowes, mastermind of “Downtown,” makes it clear that killing off Lady Sybil
and Matthew Crawley was not his idea, that “the actor wanted to leave rather
than anyone's dying just for the sake of the plot...They would both be in the
series till the end of it, if it were up to us."

There
is something primal here about young people rejecting nurturing homes to strike
out before they are ready, causing pain to those who love them. If precedent is
any guide, Jessica Brown-Findlay and Dan Stevens will survive in show biz, but “Downton”
will be their high point.

Stevens’
Broadway debut in “The Heiress” is labeled “shiny, well spoken and lacking in
discernible undercurrents” by the Times,
while Brown-Findlay bears her breasts in a movie “Albatross,” notable for “the
clang of cliché.”

Mediocrity
has been the fate of their predecessors such as Shelley Long, who prematurely
departed “Cheers” to sink without trace, as well as David Caruso, who left “NYPD
Blue” for movie stardom but is now back on series TV, playing middle-aged versions
of his original role.

In
the middle of its long run, Rob Lowe left “West Wing” to star in movies and two
other TV series that sank without trace.

As we
grieve for Sybil and Matthew’s youthful demise, old age consoles us with Maggie
Smith’s return for Season 4. Dame Maggie, who told “60 Minutes” she has never
watched “Downton,” will return as a concession to time that has ended her stage
career.

Fellowes
is auditioning a new life partner for the now-widowed Lady Mary and her baby
heir, so we can be sure that life will go on upstairs at the Abbey even as the
Bateses, Carson et al thrive below.

The
lesson here may have best been summed up in the show business classic, “All
About Eve,” when an exasperated playwright yelled at the temperamental star, “When
will the piano realize it hasn’t written the concerto?”

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

As a
former governor tries to wash himself clean in South Carolina, David Petraeus
surfaces briefly to underscore what was lost in last year’s media circus, a
much more able and honorable public figure.

Mark Sanford
has to explain away deception and misuse of public funds, while the former
General is still serving time in publicity purgatory for one large misstep,
more preyed upon than predator, acknowledged and paid for with a no-excuse
resignation.

Petraeus
is praising an inspirational book by a dying soldier who has called him hero
and mentor, “Tell My Sons” by 41-year-old Lt. Col. Mark Weber, who served under
him in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now fighting terminal cancer.

Weber’s book, addressed to his three boys, has been lauded by the current Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs and three of his predecessors as well as Donald Rumsfeld and
former Vice-President Walter Mondale.

Petraeus’
testimonial is the most poignant: “The book arrived at a challenging time for
me. It is wonderful--equal parts inspirational and sobering. It is a tremendous
reminder of the blessings that we all have, regardless of our personal
situations...it was inspirational, at a key moment.”

Whether
or not Sanford can rehabilitate himself is of no great moment, but the loss of
Petraeus is another matter. His military-political skills will be missed.

The man who got us out of Iraq without a Vietnam-like disgrace
is still only 60. When the next President takes office in 2017, Petraeus
will have been out of the armed forces for the six years required to qualify
for Secretary of Defense.

In
the light of current doubts, even among Democrats, about the stature of Chuck Hagel, a President Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or Jeb Bush might be well advised
to turn to Petraeus, who understands the Pentagon in his bones and who, if the
armed forces were still plagued by abuse of women, would be highly motivated to
solve the problem.

That
could be a second chance for both a man who fell from grace and the nation.

Monday, February 18, 2013

After
Marco Rubio runs second to a Carnival cruise ship in last week’s watery mishaps,
a fellow Floridian bobs to the surface hugging a fifty-year-old life preserver.

In a
speech, Jeb Bush asserts that a neo-Lyndon Johnson is the answer to refloating
the sinking GOP:

“He
went and he cajoled, he begged, he threatened, he loved, he hugged, he did what
leaders do, which is they personally get engaged to make something happen.”

By no
means is Bush III advocating a new Great Society, but his 2016 self-positioning
is another sign of a new Republican undertow, following such other ripples as
Karl Rove’s pushback against Tea Party crazy Steve King’s Senate bid in Iowa.

The sight
of a Bush and Rove as centrists is one measure of where the GOP is heading in
its efforts to rebalance in a second Obama term with embrace of immigration reform and a possible deal on sequesters.

As
John McCain and Lindsey Graham run out of steam on their Benghazi bluster and
Hagel-blocking while Rand Paul pipedreams of a Presidential bid, the Washington
scene seems set for easing gridlock.

If
the President is relaxed enough to be seen golfing with former pariah Tiger Woods rather than John Boehner, anything can happen as Jeb Bush tells
Republicans, “We can’t be anti-progress, we can’t be anti-innovation, anti-technology.”

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

As cops
close in on the fiery last stand of a mass murderer, a continent away Barack
Obama tries to smoke out those who have been holding America hostage with
lethal ideology.

The Christopher
Dorner story may be over, but the President’s State of the Union assault on Tea
Party barricades is just the start of a long siege.

For
over an hour last night he fired off a fusillade of rational proposals to raise
the minimum wage, reform immigration, expand education and otherwise invest in
the economy, but he will have to take the battle with Congress to the streets.

As
polls show even more Americans than those who reelected Obama solidly behind
him, the President will have to keep campaigning across the country in coming
months to pressure GOP incumbents into action between now and 2014.

Marco
Rubio’s lame response underscores their rote resistance. Looking like a sweaty
Albert Brooks in “Broadcast News,” the party’s New Hope offers nothing but
bromides against big government and the news that he has just finished paying
off his student loans.

All
this was to be expected, but the highlight of the night was Barack Obama’s
impassioned peroration on legislation for gun control.

To an
audience including families of victims, he pointed to the parents of 15-year-old
Hadiya Pendleton, who attended his inauguration and was killed “a mile away from
my house” in Chicago a week later:

“Hadiya’s
parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two
dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve
a vote.

“Gabby
Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families
of Aurora deserve a vote.

“The
families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other
communities ripped open by gun violence--they deserve a simple vote.

“Our
actions will not prevent every senseless act of violence in this country. Indeed,
no laws, no initiatives, no administrative acts will perfectly solve all the
challenges I’ve outlined tonight. But we were never sent here to be perfect. We
were sent here to make what difference we can, to secure this nation, expand
opportunity, and uphold our ideals through the hard, often frustrating, but
absolutely necessary work of self-government.”

John
Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and their minions were there to hear
those words, but will their constituents persuade them to act on them?

Monday, February 11, 2013

The
President will promise progress, GOP and Tea Party rebuttals will predict doom,
but a provocative report on America’s state of mind is already available online
in sniper Christopher Dorner’s manifesto, a mélange of over-the-top paranoia gripping
California with fear and hero-worship, a rogue society-trained killer out of
the Bourne movies meets Charlie Sheen in media land.

Exactly
50 years ago, on the eve of JFK's assassination, historian Richard Hofstadter delivered a lecture that morphed
into a classic book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” predicting the
escalation of madness in which we live today, in Washington, Hollywood and
elsewhere.

The
prototypical figure, he wrote, “traffics in the birth and death of whole
worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always
manning the barricades of civilization... he does not see social conflict as
something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working
politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good
and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight
things out to a finish.”

As
the President tries to marshal the forces of reason on gun control and other
issues, a paranoid opposition is still obsessed with Benghazi and blocking his
cabinet nominees. Do their rhetorical rants make any more sense than those of
Dorner, who kills innocents to satisfy his grievances against those remotely
related to his imagined oppressors?

“Since
the enemy,” Hofstadter wrote, “is thought of as being totally evil and totally
unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated — if not from the world, at least
from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention.
This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly
unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable,
failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial
success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began,
and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality
of the enemy he opposes.”

This
all-or-nothing state of mind dominates the culture beyond politics and crime.
Netflix comes along this week with its first self-made series, a brain-dead
version of “The West Wing” in which everyone in Washington is evil, outdoing
even “Homeland” in its award-winning sourness about the mentality of those who
govern America.

Whatever
politicians tell us about the state of the union, beyond and beneath the
speeches is a nation wallowing in paranoia and resisting reason in favor of
rising madness.

Thursday, February 07, 2013

That
message from an ancient bumper sticker comes to mind as a frustrated Congress
tries to paper over American gun madness by throwing money at services for the
mentally ill instead of keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of mass killers.

Who
will quarrel with a proposed law to spend $1.4 billion over ten years to “strengthen
the nation’s mental health services and perhaps stave off violent acts by the
mentally ill?”

Such
services could certainly help desperate families with nowhere to turn for help,
but will they be more than a band-aid to cover the Second Amendment insanity
afflicting the whole society?

Only
if mental health professionals set up shop in Washington to treat lawmakers with
anxiety disorders over opposing the National Rifle Association’s paranoia
in keeping them from limiting automatic weapons and bullet clips that end
scores of lives in seconds.

Would
any clinic have disarmed the man who pleaded guilty yesterday to shooting up a Family
Research Council Office with a pistol, two magazines and 50 rounds of
ammunition to "kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A
sandwiches in victims' faces?"

After
World War II, when mental illness was still a subject not openly discussed in
polite society, it took decades to raise public awareness of the need to
support medical help for treatment, however uncertain the results might be.

How
long will it take to change attitudes toward the gun madness of a whole society?
Dr. Joe Biden and his colleagues have a long way to go.

Monday, February 04, 2013

Super Bowl Sunday comes and goes with reminders of
how violent American life has become in 2013.

Before the Game, “Meet the Press” unwittingly juxtaposes
a parallel between politics and sport as outgoing Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta anguishes about the Tea Party threat of automatic budget cuts by
sequester, “Why in God’s name would members of Congress elected by the American
people take a step that would badly damage our national defense? But more
importantly, undermine the support for our men and women in uniform. Why would
you do that?”

In another segment, sportscaster Bob Costas bewails
how “dangerous” and “barbaric” football has become to the point that President
Obama tells an interviewer, “If I had a son, I’d think long and hard before I
let him play football.”

Hard-fought but clean competition is long gone in a
time when winning isn’t enough—-there are bounties to “splatter” opponents and
knock them out of the game. (In the Hagel hearings, McCain attacks like an
obsessed linebacker.)

Elsewhere in the news, public shooting deaths
proliferate as Congress wavers on even small steps toward gun control and
fights every attempt to ease the plight of Baby Boomers who see their expected
retirement melt away in a continuing recession.

On this day of cold pizza and reheated chili, the
aches and pains of Super Sunday will be felt by millions more than the players
who were on the field.